Abstract: An order fulfillment system receives electronic or online orders from customers and fulfills these by selecting from facilities such as retail stores and distribution centers to ship the items to complete the orders. The system determines which facility to ship from by maximizing profitability and minimizing split shipments. The system allocates orders to facilities while considering margin and preventing excessive numbers of split shipments, which reduces margin due to shipping costs. Further, the system can allocate products that are on promotion (e.g., markdown) or approaching promotion in a retail store to an online order, thus increasing margins. The system can help prevent the buildup of inventory gluts of unproductive products within a store. The system includes a profitability forecast component and in particular, can predict of the future selling price by location or channel, or a combination.

Abstract: A method of opportunistic access to a frequency band dedicated to a synchronous primary network by a secondary user. The frequency band is divided into K independent channels to which an indicator Bk and an average availability Sk are assigned. At each time frame t, the method includes observing, by the secondary user, the channel i having the greatest indicator Bi(t); and if the channel i is busy, updating the average availability Si of channel i and updating indicator Bi (t) of the channel as a function of Si, and if the channel i is free: updating the average availability Si of channel i, transmitting data set up during the frame t on channel i, computing a quality index Ri (t) of channel i, and updating indicators Bk (t) of the K channels as a function of the average availabilities Sk and Ri (t).

Abstract: A method of opportunistic access to a frequency band dedicated to a synchronous primary network by a secondary user. The frequency band is divided into K independent channels to which an indicator Bk and an average availability Sk are assigned. At each time frame t, the method includes observing, by the secondary user, the channel i having the greatest indicator Bi(t); and if the channel i is busy, updating the average availability Si of channel i and updating indicator Bi (t) of the channel as a function of Si, and if the channel i is free: updating the average availability Si of channel i, transmitting data set up during the frame t on channel i, computing a quality index Ri (t) of channel i, and updating indicators Bk (t) of the K channels as a function of the average availabilities Sk and Ri (t).